Ion Iliescu and Frontul Salvării Naţionale seized power during the 1989 revolution. The FSN organization was meant to act as a temporary government until free elections were to be held. However, on 23 January 1990, despite its earlier claims, it decided to become a party and to run in the elections it would organize. A part of the dissenters and anti-communists that joined the FSN during the revolution left following this decision. Many of the FSN personalities, including its president, Ion Iliescu, were ex-communists and as such the revolution was seen as being hijacked by the FSN. The FSN, which was widely known from the revolution and associated with it, won 66.3% of the votes, while the next party - the Democratic Union of Hungarians in Romania - obtained only 7.2% of the votes.
The protests
On 22 April 1990, the Independent Group for Democracy organised a demonstration in Aviators' Square. After the peaceful demonstration, groups of people marched towards the Romanian Television station, calling for its political independence. The following day, PNȚ-CD organized an even larger protest, occupying the road in the University Square and a part of the protesters decided to sit-in overnight. The protests drew the ire of the authorities, who, during the night between 23–24 April, began a repression of the protesters. The law enforcement agents beat up the protesters and arrested some of them. The authorities' violence had the exact opposite effect than the one expected, as more people came. Two days later, they were still there, their numbers growing, on the evening of 25 April, their number reaching 30,000. The sympathetic press reported even higher numbers, up to 50,000 each evening. A number of protesters began a hunger strike. President Ion Iliescu refused to negotiate with the protesters and called them "golani" or legionnaires. The leadership of the National Salvation Front realized that the protests grew too big to be able to repress them without impunity, so it focused on demonizing them on the state-controlled media. This part of the media called the protesters "delinquents", "hooligans", "parasites", "thieves", "extremists", "fascists", "traitors", etc. This campaign was successful particularly outside Bucharest, where the government-owned media was the only source of information. The public television showed reports of the protests in which they interviewed people marginal to both the protests and the Romanian society, such as Roma people, hawksters and prowlers.
Name and anthem
The ending "-ad" was used ironically, since many of Ceauşescu's Communist manifestations had endings like this, for instance the annual national sporting eventDaciad. The protesters also composed their own hymn, "Imnul Golanilor": The song can be translated to English as:
the eighth point of the Proclamation of Timișoara: leading members of the Romanian Communist Party and the Securitate not to be allowed to be candidates in the elections
access to the state-owned mass media for all candidates, not only FSN candidates. A 1975 law of Ceauşescu allowed the president of Romania to directly control Romanian television and radio.
postponing of the elections, since the only party that had the resources for the campaign was FSN.
The protesters also disagreed with the official doctrine of the FSN that the Revolution was only "anti-Ceauşescu" and not "anti-Communist". They also supported faster reforms, a true free market economy and a western-type democracy. After the elections the protests continued, the main goal being the removal of the government.
Violent ending
After 52 days of protests, on 13–15 June, a violent confrontation with government supporters and miners from the Jiu Valley ended the protests, with many of the protesters and bystanders being beaten and wounded. Sources differ on the number of the casualties, the government confirming seven deaths related to the events.
